Friday, October 23, 2015

In the belly of the beast 31 Per Cent of World’s Mass Shootings Here by RAY LIGHT

“The U.S. is home to 5% of the world’s population, but has had 31%
of the public mass shootings worldwide between 1966 and 2012 …,” according to
Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminal justice professor. (See “Why
the U.S. Has 31% of the World’s Mass Shootings” by Tanya Basu, Time on-line, August 2015)
Presenting his new study at a late August meeting of the American Sociological
Association, Lankford stated that there were “292 public mass shooters who have
killed a minimum of four people between 1966 and 2012. And when you narrow
shootings down to just those that occur at school and work, American incidences
account for 62% of global cases.”

Lankford believes his study is the first to confirm that “there’s
something strongly American about public mass shootings.” He and Time’s writer Tanya Basu
try to link this mainly to the number of firearms per capita in the USA which
leads the world by far. But Lankford knows there is more to it. He points to
the “strong sense of exceptionalism and individualistic culture, something that
American kids are taught from an early age.” But the bankruptcy of Lankford’s
theory is exposed by the following (cited by Basu). “‘There’s a silver lining,
however. Because
the U.S. has a preponderance of public mass shootings, the country is better
prepared than any other to deal with them,’ Lankfordsays. He points
to Columbine and Sandy Hook as events that shaped enforcement procedure.” (sic
and sick) (My emphasis, ROL) Clearly the orientation of the criminal justice
professor is to control the U.S. population, not deal with the society’s
sickness.

***

Compare the following excerpts from my 2013 article, “The Brutal
and Decaying U.S. Empire and the Newtown School Tragedy” (Ray O’ Light
Newsletter#76, January-February
2013):

“President Obama’s response to the tragedy was to immediately back
stronger gun control laws. This has been the overwhelming response of the U.S. ruling
class, including its military leaders. Already gun buy-back programs have been
implemented by such notorious law enforcement agencies as the Los Angeles
Police Department (LAPD). At the same time, other ‘enlightened’ ruling class
folks have called for better access to mental health support. And all kinds of
social-democrats, pacifists, and other opportunists are prescribing some
combination of disarming of the U.S. population (but not the police and the
military who are armed to the teeth) and a better mental health care system.

“Whatever their specific prescriptions, however, the apologists
for monopoly capitalism have a unified message: there is nothing
fundamentally wrong with this imperialist society; just a few tweaks will take
care of the problem.

“But a closer look at the facts leads to a different conclusion
entirely. The horrific Newtown, Connecticut school tragedy has the “mark of the
beast” all over it — the decadent U.S. Empire, having already devoured so many of the
world’s peoples as it grew ever more fat and parasitic over the past six
decades, is now in sharp decline and is beginning to devour its own young.

“For example, between 1991 when the first U.S. Gulf War led by
Republican President George Bush I ended and 2003 when his son, George Bush II,
embarked on the second unprovoked U.S. war against the people of Iraq, a
constant saturation of U.S. Air Force aerial flights enforced a ‘no-fly zone’
that effectively upheld a U.S. embargo, preventing medical supplies and much
necessary materiel from reaching the children of Iraq. The estimates are that
from 500,000 to a million Iraqi children under the age of five perished as a
result of this U.S. embargo that lasted for more than a decade, most of it
under Democratic commander in chief Bill Clinton. Were these Iraqi children any
less precious than the twenty children of six and seven who were murdered in
Newtown, Connecticut last month?!

“The social fabric of U.S. society in 2013 is woven almost
entirely from the reality of the crumbling of the U.S. Empire, that is, from
the decades-old violent and parasitic legacy of U.S. imperialist hegemony and
from its current
and precipitous decline. …

“No wonder millions of ‘red blooded American boys’ have gotten the
message that might makes right and that mayhem and murder is the solution to
their problems. There is an epidemic of mass murders in U.S. society. Many of
them have had a white supremacist and/or fascist motivation. … And there is
every indication that tragic mass murder events in the USA will become not less
but more
frequent in the
foreseeable future. …

“Given the current political and economic developments in the USA,
the only remedy to this sick situation, the only way to avoid an out-of-control
epidemic of mass murders such as have occurred so recently in Aurora, Colorado
and now Newtown, Connecticut and the developing military-fascist state is to defeat, dismantle and
destroy the U.S. Empire.”

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